“Ought we to go, Cousin Billy?” she asked, shifting, not the decision, but the responsibility for it, to broader shoulders. “Why not, if you care to?” said the athlete, to whom right-of-way fights were mere matters of business in no wise conflicting with the social ameliorations. Virginia hesitated. There was a thing to be said to Mr. Adams, and that without delay; but how could she say it with her cousin standing by to make an impossible trio out of any attempted duet confidential? A willingness to see that Winton had fair play need not carry with it an open desertion to the enemy. She must not forget to be loyal to her salt; and, besides, Mr. Somerville Darrah's righteous indignation was a possibility not lightly to be ignored. But, the upshot of the hesitant pause was a decision to brave the consequences--all of them; so she took Calvert's arm for the slippery crossing of the ice-bridge. Once on his own domain, Adams did the honors of the camp as thoroughly and conscientiously as if the hour held no care heavier than the entertainment of Miss Virginia Carteret. He explained the system under which the material was kept moving forward to the ever-advancing front; let her watch the rhythmic swing and slide of the rails from the car to the benches; took her up into the cab of the big “octopod” locomotive; gave her a chance to peep into the camp kitchen car; and concluded by handing her up the steps of the “dinkey.” “Oh, how comfortable!” she exclaimed, when he had shown her all the space-saving contrivances of the field office. “And this is where you and Mr. Winton work?” “It is where we eat and sleep,” corrected Adams. “And speaking of eating: it is hopelessly the wrong end of the day,--or it would be in Boston,--but our Chinaman won't know the difference. Let me have him make you a dish of tea,”--and the order was given before she could protest. “While we are waiting for Ah Foo I'll show you some of Jack's sketches,” he went on, finding a portfolio and opening it upon the drawing-board. “Are you quite sure Mr. Winton won't mind?” she asked. “Mind? He'd give a month's pay to be here to show them himself. He is peacock vain of his one small accomplishment, Winton is--bores me to death with it sometimes.” “Really?” was the mocking rejoinder, and they began to look at the sketches. They were heads, most of them, impressionistic studies in pencil or pastel, with now and then a pen-and-ink bearing evidence of more painstaking after-work. They were made on bits of map paper, the backs of old letters, and not a few on leaves torn from an engineer's note-book. “They don't count for much in an artistic way,” said Adams, with the brutal frankness of a friendly critic, “but they will serve to show you that I wasn't all kinds of an embroiderer when I was telling you about Winton's proclivities the other day.”